Sunday, July 13, 2014

Okay, in case you've not seen this before, this is the Ohio State University Marching Band playing a medley of classic video game tunes at the Nebraska / Ohio State football game on October 6, 2012. It was a bit of a FB sensation when it and other videos found their way to YouTube.*

Okay, that was cool. But I'll wager you weren't expecting this:

Yes, that is a high school marching band playing three World of Warcraft pieces for a band competition in 2012.

Yes, you can actually find WoW sheet music for a marching band.

***

Which brings me to a gripe of mine. Why is it so hard to find sheet music for MMO soundtracks not called World of Warcraft?

Sure, if you're good enough you could transcribe --my kids do that enough as it is-- but it would be nice if there were a way to get (non-WoW) MMO soundtrack sheet music. It was easy enough to find sheet music for WoW --we have it somewhere buried under other sheet music in the house right now-- but hours of searching for, say, LOTRO or SWTOR sheet music have yielded nothing.

Those two examples are hampered quite a bit by being part of popular movie franchises, but still I've not much luck at all with finding sheet music for any MMO outside of WoW.

Which is kind of sad, given that video game music has a built in audience, and would be ideal for encouraging kids to play an instrument. You can find plenty of Mario and Zelda and other console games' sheet music, but nothing for MMOs.

*I know there's several other videos out there of other college and high school marching bands with a video game medley, but my oldest was seriously impressed by the footwork involved in the OSU production. (Having a marching band flutist in your house helps with video selection.) And no, we do NOT cheer for OSU. I prefer the University of Dayton, thank you very much.

6 comments:

Despite having been in marching band in high school (I was a flutist, and later, piccolo player, myself), and having only been to the famed Camp Randall stadium when DCI was in town having its season finals there (which happened twice during the decade it took me to finish my PhD), I somehow hadnt gotten around to watching that OSU video yet.Oh my goodness, that was beautiful. Even with the person who was missing, leaving a hole in the lines, even with the forms that (more than once) didn't quite lock into place, that was one of the most beautifully marched field shows I have ever seen.

Given Indiana University's and Nebraska's musical programs, I expect this sort of thing from them, not Ohio State.

After watching it, my oldest asked me that if she ended up taking music at Ohio State would I hate her for it, I told her no. I would tell her I'm still not going to cheer for their sports teams, even if she ever went there. (She was fine with that, and given the anti-OSU cheering she did when Dayton played the Buckeyes in the NCAA tourney, she'll be doing that too.)

Another flutist! My oldest is what they call at the high school a "floboe": flute during marching band season, but oboe during the rest of the year.

Hmm, the high school performance was pretty good, too. The freeform sets seemed pretty meaningless to me -- their set designer could have done a little research and at least had them make a Horde symbol, or a sword, or something (maybe one of the sets did look like a weapon, and I missed it?) -- but they did decently well with all the standard straight and rotating lines and boxes and so forth.

I think they were hampered by the lack of personnel. There's another set of videos out there from another high school, but they were even smaller and the musicality was kind of meh. Plus, it kind of cringeworthy hearing the announcer on those other videos not even really know what he was talking about.